


you don't have to call me yours, my love

by thingswelost2



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Hurt No Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Missed Opportunities, POV Steve Rogers, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sad, just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24927454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswelost2/pseuds/thingswelost2
Summary: Finding out what to say was always the hardest part. He never knew how to. To Steve it seemed like words were puzzle pieces he could never put together.“You did say I’d miss you.”
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Kudos: 28





	you don't have to call me yours, my love

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much Canon Compliant except Steve never stayed in the past after he brought the stones back.  
> title taken from "10 AM Gare du Nord" by keaton henson  
> it's just sad tbh

The smell of fresh drops of water hitting softly on grass seemed like a well-known companion. You would think Steve would have gotten used to it by now, but strangely enough, he never managed to grasp the idea that conversations with Tony would have to happen in front of his tomb stone from now on.

For a while, he went by the lake, thinking it would be easier to remember him there, full of life and wrinkles surrounding his smile. But Tony was never his, there. He was not sure he was more his here but at least he didn’t have to remember the missed opportunities in a graveyard where Tony never came while he was alive. 

No, he kept the dreams and the what-ifs scenarios for when he dreamt about what could’ve been at night. He imagined them sharing soft kisses, and keeping promises in a house that would be their home. A place where Steve would’ve been the one who put the laughter lines on his face.

Looking down on the name, he clenched his jaw. _Keep it together, Rogers._ Ever the solider.

He didn’t bring flowers. He never did. They seemed too cliché for Tony, and for a second he could almost hear his voice.

_Bringing me flowers Cap, really? Are you going to ask me out to prom too?_

He scoffed. Even dead, Tony always managed to make him smile in a world where he never felt like he belonged. And after all, it was a way to keep him alive in Steve’s head too. A place where not even Death could touch him. _But it did. It did._ Deep down, he was scared one day, he’d forget what his voice sounded like. Perhaps that’s why he kept coming here, too.

Finding out what to say was always the hardest part. He never knew how to. To Steve it seemed like words were puzzle pieces he could never put together. 

Tony was the one who knew how to use his words, how to speak in front of crowds, how to understand people who did not seem like they had anything to say at all. But Steve, the only times he knew what to say where when the shadow of Captain America was looming over him, giving him the words for speeches he never thought he could do himself.

“You did say I’d miss you.”

Things were easy, back then. Maybe they were easier because of the secrets he chose to keep from Tony, because of the upending doom which was lingering over them without crushing them completely, like it did after that.

Perhaps it was just easier because Steve could’ve had him, then. He thought he had time. _I didn’t._

It was still raining softly, the droplets of water landing gently on his leather jacket. Around him, everything was still. There were a lot of flowers surrounding Tony’s grave, but no one else in the cemetery. No one wanted to pay a visit to the dead and be reminded of the sadness of it all. Rain seemed to drive people away from places where they could recall what they lost. But not Steve. 

Maybe it was punishment, too. A reminder that it was too little too late. He closed his eyes and opened them a moment later, hoping it would take away the memory of carrying his body away from the battlefield.

But like many things, like Tony’s smile, the sound of his laughter, the curve of his back, or the way his hands moved around as if it was a dance, it was printed in his mind and no amount of darkness could take it away.

“I don’t think I realised how much I would, then.” 

The ghost of a smile appears on his lips with the hint of a barely there chuckle and it becomes harder and harder to look at the name on the stone. He remembers how they were, at the compound. After New-York, after Ultron. He felt like he belonged somewhere for the first time in a very long time, because of Tony. 

Sometimes when he wakes up, he wonders why he didn’t stay in 2012, created a whole different timeline where he would have fixed all the things he had broken with Tony. _But it wouldn’t be true, would it. Cause your Tony wouldn’t be here, would he. He’d be there, below the ground in a coffin you could never bear to look at because you felt like your heart was being ripped out of your chest._

That’s the thing, with regrets, they are not always there with you, they grow, they come and go like the water that ebbs and flows. 

Steve would never wake up in the morning with Tony by his side, will never know what it’s like to kiss him, will never know what kind of stupid nickname he would’ve given him if they had been together, will never know what kind of conversations they would have had as they’d lie awake in bed at night.

He’ll never know what it’s like to be loved by someone like Tony Stark. Or maybe he did. But that thought seemed to hurt more than all the others because it meant he could’ve been his and he missed it because he was too much of a coward to say anything. _They do say you realise the true value of something once you lost it, after all._

“But you probably did. You knew this sort of things much better than I ever did.”

_Of course, I did. Didn’t catch the part where I’m a genius, Rogers?_

Steve put his hand on the cold stone, biting the inside of his cheek, looking away. Trying to blink back the tears threatening to fall. Crying at Tony’s tomb stone about how he was gone and there was nothing he could do to bring him back was probably too cliché as well.

“Damn it, I really miss you, Tony.”

He looked at the stone one more time and a few seconds later he turned and walked away.

No one answered.  
No one ever did.  
He came back the next day, and the one after that.


End file.
